A Mother Knows
by MarvellouslyWondrous
Summary: Sally Jackson has spent many nights watching over her son's sleep. Tonight is no different.


Authors Note

Hey folks! Can't seem to get Mr. Jackson off my mind recently!

Thank you so much to everyone who favorited and reviewed and read my other story 'What Leo Found Out', I truly appreciate your kind words :D

This is just a little drabble of sorts about one of the characters in the series I have the utmost respect for and without whom, there would be no Percy Jackson for us to love; Miss Sally Jackson.

Disclaimer: Yeah, I still own nothing. Nothing but my ideas and dreams.

Hope you enjoy and thank you for reading! x

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Sally Jackson knew she was a lot tougher than people gave her credit for.

Though she liked to think was a calm, understanding person, she also knew she didn't suffer fools, especially when it came to her son. And by fools, she didn't necessarily mean people. Nowadays the things she wouldn't put up with when it came to her son were monsters and furies and stupid things that crawled up from the Underworld and... and everything else she could no longer protect him from.

Sally leaned against the doorframe, watching the moonlight drift in from the open window, illuminating the slumbering form of her twelve year old, sprawled out half under and on top of his sheets.

She frowned, lines of worry wrinkling her brow prematurely. Twelve. He was _twelve. _That still made him practically a baby right? Sally sighed, sure, a baby with his own sword.

It was 2am, and here she was, hovering outside Percy's door like the mother of a newborn. Percy was far from being a baby anymore, but she had flashbacks of hovering near a cot in the dead of night, jumping at every noise and tensing at every movement. Scared to death that monsters would come in the dead of night to take her baby away.

She bit her lip; the monsters knew who Percy was now, they knew where he was and what he meant for the future and oh how she worried.

Percy shifted in his sleep, turning onto his back and she smiled. Sally didn't know how she'd had a hand in something so beautiful, but there he was. And now there were... creatures and Gods that wanted to kill him.

The thought that anyone would want to kill her baby made her nothing short of murderous. Sally knew that she, a mere mortal, wouldn't tolerate a hand raised to her son... even if there may be nothing she could physically do.

This was the hardest thing, Sally thought, knowing that it was time to let Percy protect himself. Protect himself from what she could no longer protect him from. She had tried, for years and years she had tried; marrying Gabe... that awful human being... had hidden Percy from the world of Gods and monsters and had allowed her to sleep at night... and not hover in his doorway like she was now.

Sally sighed heavily, pulling her nightgown tighter around her as she walked into Percy's room quietly. She stood at the edge of his bed and sat slowly, perching next to her twelve year old. It did her heart good sometimes, just to drink in the fact that all her precautions and worries and preparations meant that he was still here. He was lying right in front of her, breathing gently and occasionally wrinkling his nose.

She breathed out a quiet laugh; he'd wrinkled his nose in his sleep since he was a toddler. Gods, he looked so much like his father.

Sally didn't like to dwell on Poseidon too much – after all, she had gone from him, to being alone, to being with Gabe. Thinking on about their beautiful summer together made her melancholy, but then she'd only have to look at the dark haired, green eyed little boy with his beaming grin and grasping little fingers to know everything was right in the world. Come monsters and Gods and the depths of the Underworld, all the worries in the world she'd experienced trying to protect Percy were a small price to pay for her son's green eyes, for his little fingers and sleepy nose wrinkling.

She reached down and gently pushed a lock of dark hair from his forehead, he really needed a haircut. Sally thought of everything her son had told her; about his adventures across the country, killing monsters and making friends and fighting Gods and saving the world from a war. It made her want to both laugh and cry. Laugh because, wow, maybe she'd toughened him up a little _too_ well and cry because she knew, deep down, that he was born a Hero... and nothing she could say could change that.

Sally pursed her lips, eyes watering,

"Oh honey, why couldn't you be destined to be like a... like a doctor or milkman. Something safe and boring..." she whispered.

In her heart of hearts she knew that he was destined for far more than the mundane life of mortals. He shifted in his sleep again onto his side, yawning and facing her and she breathed him in. Percy Jackson, her beautiful little miracle, the only truly good thing in her life, a gift from the Gods.

She leaned down and brushed a gentle kiss over her sleeping son's forehead, smiling widely when he wrinkled his nose and swiped at his forehead when she pulled away. Stubborn boy.

"I love you sweetheart."

Sally stood and moved to go back to bed. All was well with the world tonight.


End file.
